LaCie Rugged Safe is the “safest mobile hard drive on the market”

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If the security of data on your mobile hard drive is a top priority then LaCie has just released a new drive that may suit your needs. It’s called the Rugged Safe, and LaCie tout it as the safest mobile hard drive on the market.

The 500GB capacity, bus-powered USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 drive sports 128-bit AES hardware encryption and biometric authentication through a fingerprint scanner. No software is required to use the hard drive and associated protection as everything is handled by the drive, meaning use on any machine is a simple plug-and-play affair. It even has the option of specifying up to ten different users if used in a business setting.

It’s not just your data that’s well-protected, as the drive itself is surrounded by a shock-resistant enclosure called the rubber bumper. Inside the case four independent suspensions hold the hard drive in place just in case it ever gets droppd or hit.

The Rugged Safe comes with a 3-year warranty, LaCie Backup Assistant, PC and Mac compatibility, and will cost $189.99 for the 500GB model. A 1TB model is also available for $299.99.

There’s one thing missing from this drive: USB 3.0. I don’t expect any external hard drives coming out in the second half of 2010 to stick with USB 2.0, and I’m surprised LaCie hasn’t added it to the Rugged Safe. It will limit sales as we progress through the year, but maybe an update is already underway and we will see another announcement in a few months.

The hard drive is certainly well-protected inside that casing, but you do end up with a larger device to carry around. The casing measures 90 x 28 x 145mm and the unit weighs 298 grams. It’s bigger than other equivalent capacity drives, but this is a drive clearly aimed at the security conscious where size and weight may be low on the list of priorities.